New York, New York, It's A Wonderful Town
by Manchester
Summary: In that metropolis during the year 1976, Spike meets someone who knows how to have a really fun night.


He was so soddin' bored.

Spike had lost track of Drusilla for several years, around the early seventies, and he'd come to New York City to check out a rumor that the insane vampiress was in that metropolis. Not hearing any news about recent large-scale massacres in the vicinity, Spike had gone the rounds of the demon bars, passing along the message that he was searching for his bird, and it would be best for everyone's health that someone should talk, and soon.

Naturally, nobody had said a bleedin' word, so that meant Spike would have to retrace his steps, only this time killing his way through the underworld until it was decided among the creatures of the night that either the vampire would be told what he wanted to know, or someone desperately tried to assassinate Spike. In the latter case, the demon who had once been called William the Bloody would again show the world why he had been named that.

Frankly, Spike could perform every step of the whole boring dance in his sleep, and his mood wasn't improved by having to wait inside a hovel of an apartment building that seemed to be part brothel.

Sitting in the squalid apartment where he'd murdered the sole occupant and disposed of in a dumpster several blocks away, the vampire glumly poured himself another glass of the expensive bottle of whisky he'd stolen earlier and which was probably worth more than the entire contents of the fleapit that he was currently occupying.

Knocking back his drink and pouring himself another, Spike got up from the kitchen table and wandered over to the room window, carrying his full glass. Pulling aside the bedsheet he'd hung before the window for daylight protection, the vampire moodily sipped his whisky and peered down into the darkness well past the midnight hour and the deserted street below, hoping for a good car crash, a mugging, or something. Anything at all, just to break up the monotony.

BANG!

The gunshot resounded throughout the room, making Spike flinch, drop his near-empty glass, and whirl around to look at the front door of the apartment, where the weapon had fired. He stared in shock at the new bullet hole in the panel, absently smelling the odor of fine Scotch that now permeated everywhere. The vampire followed the imaginary line of the bullet's path, that went from the door to the table where he'd just been sitting….and right through the bottle of whisky, now smashed into innumerable shards of glass and spraying every bit of exceptional booze into the air.

Spike's face turned into a mask of ultimate rage, as he whispered, "That was a nearly full bottle of fifty-year Macallan single malt."

The fuming vampire silently stalked over to the door, using all his unearthly senses, smelling and listening intently, to halt before the door as Spike absently heard someone walk down the hall corridor. What more concerned the demon now was something right on the other side of the door that he'd observed often enough in his unlife: a death rattle, and the smell of copious amounts of blood.

Warily pulling open the door, Spike stared down in utter astonishment at the newly-deceased body of a man on the corridor floor just beyond the doorway. The vampire blurted out the first thing that came to mind: "What the hell is this, a takeout corpse?"

Looking quickly at both sides of the corridor, Spike saw nobody's faces peering out from their doors. But then, considering this kind of neighborhood he was in, this wasn't likely to happen. Blokes here knew better to stick their noses into other people's business, especially when this was accompanied by shots and dead people. Speaking of which….

Spike grabbed hold of a limp arm of the dead man, and dragged him into the apartment, slamming the door closed on the way. Looking down at his prize on the floor, the vampire changed into his demonic form, and dropping to his knees, Spike then seized the corpse's shoulders, lifted the body, and sank his fangs into the neck below the lolling head, to finally feast.

His feeding didn't even stop at the fusillade of gunfire that suddenly erupted elsewhere in the apartment building.

When Spike finally finished draining the lifeless man, and changed back to his human features, to lick the blood off his lips, he did have a scowl on his face. That latest gunplay would have persuaded the other occupants of the building that enough was enough and the polis were sure to have been called. They'd be poking around everywhere, and included in that search, led by the pool of blood outside his door, would be his quarters, which currently included a little thing like a dead body. So, it was clearly time to take his leave of this damn place.

Getting to his feet, accompanied by the sounds of several more shots, Spike headed to the door, grabbing only along the way his coat, which held his wallet, lighter, and fags. There wasn't anything else he cared about in the room, so he could take off at a moment's notice. Shrugging into his outer garment, Spike opened the door and stepped out into the corridor, which was still empty. Striding along the hallway, the vampire smirked at the sounds of people inside their own rooms locking and barricading their doors.

Sniffing the air, Spike could smell the appetizing odor of more blood. This made him slow down in his rapid pace, to then come to a thoughtful halt on his way to the back door of the building. Tilting his head, Spike couldn't hear any police sirens, so if he really wanted, he could defer his departure for a few more minutes….

That exact period of time later, a very-impressed Spike stood at the corner wall where two hallways intersected, listening to the gasping agony of a human, and the soft patter of liquid dripping, all of this coming from around the corner, further down the hallway. The vampire had just passed a quite splendid number of thoroughly dead people in his stroll through the battlefield of whatever conflict had taken place tonight in this apartment building, and he was extremely curious to see whoever was responsible for all the bloodshed.

Regarding that, Spike would have ordinarily done some snacking along the way. Unfortunately, the police sirens now coming closer meant he had to be satisfied with his prior meal, and finish whatever present business he felt like as fast as possible.

Nodding to himself, Spike cautiously peeked around the corner of the wall. No sense in getting a bullet in him, even if it wouldn't do any harm. What the vampire saw now had him fearlessly step out in the hallway and walk down it to where a seriously-wounded man was slumped down on the corridor floor, his back against the wall.

Strolling over to stop and lean with his own back against the other wall, Spike looked down with interest at a man in his mid to late twenties, wearing a green military jacket, and having a rather strange hairstyle of his head shaved on the sides and top, leaving only a center strip of hair at the top of his skull. Spike's nose twitched at the smell of the blood covering most of the man, still seeping from a wound on his neck that the injured bloke was trying to hold shut with a hand, all while still staring blankly ahead, not paying the slightest bit of attention to his watcher.

After a few seconds, Spike was thinking of leaving. He'd had his curiosity satisfied, and the police were getting really near, so he couldn't eat that bloke. Not that the wounded man looked like he had all that much blood left in his body, anyway. Turning to leave, Spike abruptly halted, bemusedly considering the thought he'd just had. Why not turn him? Any human who could create in just a few moments the kind of carnage inside this building tonight would make a perfectly wonderful vampire.

Turning back, Spike squatted down on his haunches, to look into the wounded man's eyes. They stared past the demon, into his own personal hell, causing Spike to reassess his plan. This bloke looked like just too much bloody trouble, in all senses of that adjective. So, forget it. Still….Spike would never forgive himself, if he didn't do SOMETHING to seriously mess with the bloke who'd destroyed his booze.

Waving his hand in front of the other man's face, Spike whistled shrilly, and then shouted, "Oi, there! Wakey, wakey!"

That finally got a reaction. The bleeding man's eyes blinked, his attention finally caught, and he now looked directly at the blonde male giving him an amused look just a few feet away, and listened disbelievingly to what was now said.

"Hey, thanks for the meal, mate. By the way -- I'll be waiting for you in hell." At those last words, Spike shifted his features into his demonic face, with its ridged skin, yellow eyes, and fangs.

A choking moan of terror came from the other man, who then fell over on his side, and attempted to crawl away from Spike, who'd now changed back to his human form, stood up, and walked away down the corridor, snickering to himself, as the vampire listened to the police warily enter the front door of the building.

Bursting out from the rear door, and leaping over the chain-link fence surrounding the back of the building, Spike hit the ground running, all while chortling to himself, "Oh, William, you're such a baaaaad boy! Making a man's last moments perfectly dreadful! Whatever shall we do with you?" Spike ran off into the night, whooping with laughter.

* * *

Several months later, Travis Bickle looked blankly from his driver's seat of his taxi as he drove through the night of New York City. The forces of law and order had reluctantly decided not to charge him for his rampage that night, since he'd actually rescued an underage girl from a life of prostitution, and the media had happily praised him for it all. Plus, everybody he'd shot had an extensive criminal record, which had helped somewhat. So, he'd been let go to recuperate, and his body was almost healed up.

His mind was another different matter entirely.

During his hospital stay, Travis had cautiously inquired if people saw strange things while dying. Assured by his doctors that near-death experiences were often accompanied by hallucinations, the wounded man had been somewhat relieved at that time. However, he still had doubts, which had been mentally gnawing at the man's already-fragile sanity for weeks now.

Surely, back then, he couldn't have actually met a real demon from hell? Which couldn't be awaiting him in that infernal region, when the taxi driver came to the end of his life and went to his final destination?

Couldn't he?

* * *

Author's Note: A little AU from the original ending of that film. As shown, Travis shot just three people (a bouncer, a pimp, and a brothel customer), and he wound up seated on a sofa all bloody, but looking pleased and pretending to shoot himself, when the cops found him. Of course, that wasn't in the Buffyverse, and Travis didn't meet Spike, as presented here.


End file.
